Vostu’s Gol Mania Scores a Goal for Realtime Soccer Gameplay on Facebook
Brazilian social games developer Vostu is kicking its Facebook offering up a notch with Gol Mania, a realtime arcade-style soccer title for the platform. The game launched at the end of September and is so far making regular appearances on our weekly list of emerging Facebook games.
According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Gol Mania currently has 880,000 monthly active users and 100,000 daily active users.

Gol Mania lets players compete against friends and random Facebook users in soccer games around the world. When starting the game, players select their team name and a look for their players which includes three types of hairstyles and numerous color combinations for their uniforms. There is a training mode designed to get players accustomed to the game’s simplistic control scheme and the basics of soccer.
All gameplay is against live opponents in real time. Down on the field, one team is given possession of the ball and must work to get it into the opposing team’s goal. On offense, players can move using the arrow keys, as well as pass and shoot using the X and Z keys. If positioned at the proper distance and angle from the goal, they can also shoot and have a CPU teammate assist in kicking the ball into the goal. On defense, players move with the arrow keys and use the X and Z keys to switch defenders and steal the ball away from the other team.
The game length is significantly truncated from the traditional 90 minutes down to just a couple to encourage faster gameplay. For participating, players receive coins, experience points, and even trophies. Once players have leveled up sufficiently and acquired enough coins, they can unlock new stadiums to play in. Trophies can be displayed in the player’s trophy room.

Social elements of Gol Mania extend beyond playing against random opponents. Players can share their accomplishments via viral channels and track their friends’ position in relation to theirs using a leaderboard at the bottom of the screen. This can also be toggled to show how many coins their friends have earned. Players can play against their friends directly by creating game lobbies and inviting their friends, or searching for friends that are currently playing and joining them.
Gol Mania is currently monetized through the use of Facebook Credits to purchase additional coins, the soft currency, which can be spent on unlocking new stadiums. Credits can also be used to purchase additional energy, which is required to play games. Note that playing against friends does not currently cost the player any energy.
The game contains several placeholders for upcoming features, the most prominent of which is an in-game store. The world map, which displays the stadiums available to players, currently shows several countries as “coming soon.” Vostu appears to be actively adding content, as it launched a Mexico stadium for the game in mid-October.
You can follow Gol Mania’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.



December 6th, 2011 at 7:49 am
[...] products within genres from the ground up. Vostu seems to be on a similar track, recently releasing Gol Mania, a soccer sim that doesn’t at all resemble any of Zynga’s current game lineup, on [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 10:01 am
[...] [Editor's Note: The following article comes from Vostu co-founder and Chief Scientist Mario Schlosser and Chief Researcher Neil Molino. It compares retention patterns between Vostu's city-building sim, MegaCity, and its recently-released real time soccer sim, Gol Mania.] [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 2:33 pm
[...] in accelerated time and are depicted by an abstract top-down tactical view. Unlike rival title Gol Mania from fellow Brazilian dev Vostu, which features real-time arcade-style soccer [...]
January 26th, 2012 at 4:16 pm
thnx
August 6th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
[...] Facebook title from Brazilian developer Vostu, the team behind Flying Kingdoms, World Mysteries and Gol Mania. At the time of writing, the game is showing up as the No. 22 top gainer in games by daily active [...]